Reforming the United Kingdom's public employment and social security agencies
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852307081150 |
| Date | 01 September 2007 |
| Author | Jay Wiggan |
| Published date | 01 September 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Reforming the United Kingdom’s public employment and
social security agencies
Jay Wiggan
Abstract
The creation, during Labour’s second term, of the Department for Work and
Pensions and the new delivery agency Jobcentre Plus, was a significant reorgani-
zation of the administration of employment and social security policy. Drawing on
Regulation theory the article argues that reform was structurally driven by the
need to ensure delivery mechanisms aligned with Labour’s vision of an ‘employ-
ment first’ welfare state. The organization and objectives of the Employment
Service and Benefits Agency that Labour inherited hindered moves to promote
joined-up working to deliver employment opportunities for the economically in-
active. To overcome this problem the Government embarked on a merger to
break down the organizational, historical and cultural barriers that had separated
the work of each agency. The administrative function of delivering social security
and employment policy has been shaped into an active exponent of the
Government’s socioeconomic strategy for supporting an evolving neo-liberal
regime of accumulation.
Points for practitioners
One-stop shops have become a growing feature of policy as governments seek
to join up service delivery. The article analyses the development of the United
Kingdom’s one-stop working age agency, Jobcentre Plus. It examines why the
new organization was introduced to tackle the fragmentation and specialization
embedded in the administration of employment and benefits. The performance
focus and structural organization of previous agencies did not complement the
employment first policy advocated by New Labour hindering its achievement. The
reforms have delivered the greater concentration on moving people into work
that is central to the wider social and economic objectives of the UK Government.
Jay Wiggan is Research Associate at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK.
Copyright © 2007 IIAS, SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
Vol 73(3):409–424 [DOI:10.1177/0020852307081150]
410 International Review of Administrative Sciences 73(3)
Key words: Joined-up Government, New Labour, one-stop shops, régulation
theory
Introduction
This article draws on régulation theory inspired work, particularly that of Jessop
(1999, 2002) and Grover and Stewart (1999, 2002) as a framework for understand-
ing the changes in administrative organization and function of the primary employ-
ment and social security agencies in the UK. It suggests that just as the neo-liberal
revolution in state and economic organization and policy gave rise to particular forms
of governance under the Conservative governments of 1979–97 the evolution of this
paradigm has required new arrangements to support its continued reproduction. The
particular form these have taken in the administration of employment and social
security services is informed by flaws within the previous structures and New
Labour’s specific political and economic objectives.
The impetus for reorganization of the UK Employment Service (ES) and Benefits
Agency (BA) was part of a specific redirection of social security to support labour
market ‘activation’ of both traditional jobseekers and non-traditional economically
inactive users of social security services. This has been pursued through a focus on
improved coordination and joined-up working across government at the local and
national level to deliver a more holistic service for users. Joint work between the
organizationally distinct Employment Service and Benefits Agency prior to the New
Labour administrations was relatively loose, ad hoc and had met with limited success
(James, 2003). The two organizations had been unable to fully transcend the barriers
created by different client bases, performance and organizational objectives and
working practices. This posed problems for the creation of a coherent form of serv-
ice delivery in employment social security necessary to support the New Labour’s
welfare to work reforms and hence its overall economic programme.
The first steps towards a more significant reorganization of delivery began with
the ONE pilot programmes in the late 1990s which trialled a more formal approach
to joining up activity between the BA, ES and other local agencies (James, 2003;
Social Security Select Committee, 1999). Yet, these also encountered difficulties relat-
ing to the continued existence of separate delivery agencies for those seeking a job
and those out of work, but not seeking employment, such as the disabled and lone
parents. The subsequent creation of Jobcentre Plus (JCP) can be understood as a
form of ‘hard’ Joined-up Government (JUG) where attempts at coordination between
two distinct entities has proved flawed, and more comprehensive reorganization
through merger is required. In régulationist terms, New Labour was rejecting the
1980s and 1990s legacy of a fragmentation of delivery bodies (Ling, 2002; Pollitt,
2003). Fragmentation was regarded as inimical to the success of embedding an
administrative structure favourable to the implementation of New Labour’s ‘employ-
ability’ agenda (see Blair, 2002; Blunkett, 2000). This article therefore takes a primarily
structural perspective on the JUG reforms implemented in UK employment and social
security delivery (Christensen and Lægreid, 2006: 6).
Wiggan The UK’s public employment and social security agencies 411
The régulation theory framework
During the 1970s the sense of a growing ‘crisis’ in funding public services in the
developed economies associated with the experience of high unemployment, high
inflation and low growth, led to the emergence of the French Régulation School.
Régulationist ideas concerned themselves with developing a theoretical and analyti-
cal framework which explained a crisis in ‘Fordist’ economic production (Boyer, 2002:
15). Régulation theory accepts that periodic crises in accumulation afflict the devel-
opment and economic growth of capitalist society. These are an intrinsic element of
the system, rather than a short run mismatch in the economy which once particular
measures have been taken will enable the economy to once again tend towards
equilibrium (Grover and Stewart, 2002). The basis of the approach is that economic
development consists of two related concepts, an ‘accumulation regime’ and a ‘mode
of regulation’. The former consists of a particular (historically situated) trajectory for
maintaining economic production and growth encompassing the organization of
production; the distribution of value which allows for the reproduction of different
groups within society and the composition of demand and the time horizon of
capital (Boyer, 1990). The mode of régulation refers to the range of institutions,
norms and organizational patterns forged through historically specific social and
political conflict that flow out of a given accumulation regime and in turn support,
sustain and attempt to reproduce the given accumulation regime (Grahl and Teague,
2000; Grover and Stewart, 1999). It includes not only the economic, but also the
individual and collective behaviour of social relationships that give rise to, and result
from, the codification of these relationships in institutional arrangements upon which
economic growth and accumulation regimes are based (Aglietta, 1998; Boyer, 2005).
Régulationists have attempted to examine how social relationships can successfully
channel and direct the accumulation process so that the crisis of accumulation or key
factors underpinning a crisis are at least partially resolved, before the very success of
these measures reveals new difficulties for production and continued accumulation
(Boyer, 1990).
The two concepts may not necessarily conform and may indeed conflict at certain
historical points. The regime of accumulation and mode of regulation will vary
between countries, reflecting the different process of development. Régulation
theory advocates have focused on the decline of Fordist arrangements in the
developed economies as the principal regime of accumulation and the ascendancy of
different accumulation regimes (Boyer, 2000, 2005) and how this has impacted on
the mode of régulation. This does not necessarily, however, equate to different over-
all directions of economic development and production among the developed indus-
trialized nations; rather, national differences and specificity of accumulation and
regulation may be said to exist within broad phases of modes of development and
production. Régulation theory provides a framework with which to analyse the rela-
tionship between the macro and the micro, how changes in the accumulation regime
governing economic production and consumption are worked out and reflected in
the institutional structures of the mode of régulation. There is no guarantee that the
accumulation regime will not conflict with the mode of régulation. Previous institu-
tional compromises and arrangements arrived at because of problems encountered
412 International Review of Administrative Sciences 73(3)
in a particular historical context may increase the rigidity of the mode of régulation
and reduce its ability to respond to changes in the development of a new accumula-
tion regime. Such a conflict will be expected to give rise to the search for changes in
the mode of régulation (Andre, 2002; Boyer, 1990).
The régulationist concept has been applied to a range of fields of study (see Boyer
and Saillard, 2002), but it is the...
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